The present invention relates to a picture processing apparatus, a picture processing method, a picture pickup apparatus, and a program. More particularly, the invention relates to a picture processing apparatus, a picture processing method, a picture pickup apparatus, and a program for having scenes of picked-up moving pictures linked to the subjects appearing in the scenes for easy picture handling.
Falling prices of video cameras in recent years have prompted the devices to become widely available. With their enclosure getting smaller than ever, the video cameras can let people take moving pictures easily wherever they are. Moving pictures are also taken casually through the use of a moving picture pickup feature incorporated in mobile phones and digital still cameras.
Although moving pictures have become easy to take, it is still difficult to handle the picked-up pictures. A number of techniques have been proposed to solve the problem through the addition of a variety of attribute information to the moving pictures having been taken. Illustratively, Japanese Patent Laid-open No. 2004-62868 discloses techniques whereby the names of persons appearing as subjects in picked-up pictures are recorded as meta data about the pictures.
Some business-use video cameras are designed to add such attributes as the weather during picture taking, locations, sound volumes, and thumbnails representative of clips (each clip is composed of moving pictures acquired from a single picture-taking session) to each of the scenes that have been picked up.
Japanese Patent Laid-open No. 2000-214945 discloses techniques for taking pictures of a person wearing a badge that emits a pattern of light indicating a particular ID which, when detected from the pictures taken, allows the person wearing the badge to be identified within the pictures.